


Permanent Duty Station

by ArwenLune



Series: Rock Happy 'verse [18]
Category: Generation Kill, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crossover, Daily life on Atlantis, Gen, Marine Corps, Newcomer to Atlantis, Original Character(s), POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 23:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/ArwenLune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"And then I'm going to recruit some people," Nate said with satisfaction.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Atlantis. Enter stage left: Captain Bryan Patterson</p>
            </blockquote>





	Permanent Duty Station

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to get an idea of who the POV character is, [HERE](http://youtu.be/oquZP7saqoE) is a video clip that introduces him really well. 
> 
> This was going to be a 500-word story, but I do so enjoy introducing new people to my little 'verse :-)

"Captain Patterson, are you sure you want to go before the holidays, sir?" The Gunnery Sergeant in charge of personnel logistics asked him.

"Yeah, I'm sure," he answered. Not feeling the need to tell the man that his marriage had just ended. It hadn't been an acrimonious break, but still living in the same house was rapidly changing that. One thing he didn't want to do was spend Christmas in the house where his ex had invited her family, or perhaps even more depressing, in barracks at Pendelton. At least on Atlantis he'd be busy getting to know a whole new station.

"Very well, sir. You and the pilot will be the only ones heading out, at approximately 1600 hours tomorrow. Please present yourself in the Loading Bay at 1530 hours with your kit, and if you could make sure none of these items," he was handed a list, "are among your things, that would speed things up."

"Thank you. Have you been out there yourself, Gunny?"

"Yes sir, I have."

"If you had the chance for a last shopping trip, what would you buy?"

"Well sir, the revised kit list is pretty thorough," the man said thoughtfully. It was; there'd been the standard mission kit list, and a semi-official addendum from Major Lorne with things that were deemed handy for officers to have out there. Sewing kit, personalised shatterproof mug, supply of sharpies and whiteboard markers, that sort of thing. "But I would say that good quality coffee and chocolate is never a waste to bring along. If you don't want to use it, you can always use it as trade currency."

"Noted. Thank you."

(He'd later learn from Rich Barrett that if he'd been a GySgt himself, the list would have included 'porn,' but that sort of thing wasn't said to officers, who were expected to remember of their own accord to bring recreational materials.)

It was December 21, and the SGC wasn't notably in holiday spirit apart from some subtle decoration around lab doors. Life didn't stop, down here; non-time pressured research was on hold and active missions would be suspended, but the operational level of the mountain functioned at normal levels. Other planets ( _other planets!_ ) didn't care that Earth had a few days off, after all.

He wondered at the wisdom of heading out to Atlantis at a time when they weren't expecting to deal with newcomers yet. The two others Nate had recruited were Patterson's own Gunny, Rich Barrett,  and a newly promoted Sergeant whom Patterson didn't really know, who would be filling a billet in Alpha Company. They would be coming after New Year, choosing to use accrued leave now.

Nate himself was on Earth too, but he'd assured Bryan that there were plenty familiar faces on Atlantis to help him get settled. Colbert, Person, Tim Bryan and Christopher were out there now. And maybe with a few days he'd have some time to orient himself on the city before the training started.

 

In a week at the Cheyenne base he'd read a selection of mission reports about the expeditionn and done virtual reality training. He'd also been put to some serious study about cultural classification, conflict resolution and leadership in extreme situations. Some of the subjects had overlapped with some of his experience during deployment, but a lot of it had the new context of situations taking place on another planet, with zero social or cultural context to relate to. According to Nate he had gotten the same subjects Nate had been taught, but condensed into a week and personalised for a senior Captain who was going out there to lead a Gate Team.

There wasn't a Gate Team for him as yet - as far as he knew - but with the new personnel rotation system they apparently needed more flexibility. Patterson understood that to mean he'd be a pinch-hitter.

He'd been through the Gate twice that week, to the Alpha site and to a long-term mining camp to meet aliens. His training on Atlantis would mostly consist of being attached to various teams for missions, which he supposed spoke of a lot of confidence in his ability to learn to swim in various liquids very, very fast.

Warszawski, one of the trainers for the Atlantis mission, had said to think of offworld missions like 'Jumping blindfolded off a ledge into a river and learning to swim as you go. Only sometimes the water is rapids. Or boiling. Or not in fact, water at all.'

Nate Fick had said it was going to be the most terrifying, insane, dangerous, exhilarating and rewarding thing he would ever do.

 

The next morning was partly a somewhat terrifying conversation with Colonel Mitchell - terrifying mostly because the man was clearly trying to be reassuring, but his very strange teammates kept butting in on the conversation and supplying distinctly un-reassuring details.

Then a thorough medical examination; apparently they wanted to add to his Earthside medical baseline as much as possible. They also tested how he'd responded to the gene therapy, which was 'inconclusively' until they handed him a small object and told him to think 'on' at it. It lit up very, very slightly, really only visible when he cupped his hands around it.

"That's a yes?" he said, trying not to sound hopeful. The gene thing sounded weird, but there would be advantages to being able to fly the shuttles, even if just as backup.

"That's an 'I have never seen such a lukewarm response,'" the doctor said, looking at it through a gap between Patterson's hands. "There's clearly some result, but this rates about a 1, maybe a 1.5 on our scale. It could be that you have a learning process ahead of you."

"Or a career in night lights," Patterson said, thinking 'off' at the thing. It dimmed.

"The ability is physical - genetic," the doc clarified, "but it's also a learning process, and it might be easier once you're in the city. I'll note it in your file as something to explore."

 

He reported to the loading bay - a space right next to the Gate Room where the shuttle was stashed while it was on Earth - with his duffel and the two crates he'd been given for his personal gear.

There were a couple of NCOs on one side of the area with an airport style scanner and a giant stack of identical boxes, systematically checking all of them. Presumably for the kind of items that weren't supposed to be brought to Atlantis. On the other side was the shuttle, its ramp open.

In front of it was a BDU-clad Air Force Major, sounding exasperated as he told a woman - Mitchell's teammate from that morning - that he was not taking her package unless she got it scanned.

"Vala, I understand your feelings about the man, but nobody is going to believe that they just 'forgot' to scan a Christmas package from you to Woolsey."

"Major Lorne is correct," said Teal'c, who had been watching the exchange silently. "Complying with your request could negatively impact both his and Staff Sergeant Siler's career."

"But _Teal'c_ …" she pouted up at him prettily, shifted into a frown when it seemed to have no effect, and then flashed a bright grin and whirled away.

"Daniel probably hasn't lunched yet, we should go get him. Come!"

Teal'c didn't follow, instead giving Major Lorne a very formal incline of his head.

"Please convey the warmest of season's greetings," he said. "And I hope to see you again before long."

"It was good to see you again, my friend," the Major said warmly, shaking the man's hand. "My greetings to your son."

When the other man (alien. _Alien_!) had left, Patterson saluted, formally presenting himself to the 2nd in command of the Atlantis expedition.

"Captain Bryan Patterson reporting, sir."

He was glad he'd been warned by Nate, because he could see how he might have mistaken this man for a typical flyboy officer. Lorne was average size, obviously fit but not very imposing. His posture was relaxed, and there was something mild about him that would have caused every new Marine to push and push in an attempt to find edges to his personality.

Nate had explained how offworld missions required very different personalities from Recon deployments, and that Lorne was widely considered to be one of the top gate team leaders, as well as the man who singlehandedly held up half the sky in Atlantis.

Lorne acknowledged the salute with an expression Patterson thought might mean 'I know you have to do this, you're a Marine, but please get out of the habit soon.'

"Evan Lorne. Have you been processed out? All your paperwork cleared?"

"I have the file here, sir."

"Good. If you want to get your gear cleared by Staff Sgt Siler, then we'll load all this good stuff up first."

Patterson brought his belongings over to the scanner, and looked around to realise that Lorne hadn't been speaking in the usual royal 'we' - he'd grabbed a small loading truck and began stacking boxes on it to bring them into the shuttle.

The boxes were about the size of a large shoe box, and most of them had name labels and bar codes. Some of them had children's drawings on them, or Christmas stickers.

Patterson took a stack from the 'cleared' side and walked them into the shuttle.

"Here's good," Lorne indicated a space in the cockpit where he'd started stashing boxes.

"Christmas packages, sir?"

"Yeah. Normal freight comes by spaceship, but that is only once every ten weeks, and it takes three weeks to get to us. This is the Christmas run. You would not believe the amount of trouble it is to make sure they're a transportable size and don't include any prohibited items, so we started handing out these boxes to families."

He noticed there was also two really large and heavy boxes, as well as a stack of empty folded boxes. Huh.

Despite the volume, the men were obviously used to this process, because it didn't take as long as he would have thought. There was a system of cargo nets in the shuttle (jumper, _puddlejumper_ ) and though the path remaining after everything was loaded was so narrow they had to turn their shoulders sideways, it did all fit. 

"Copy that, sir. I'll begin the manoeuvre," Lorne said into his radio, and gestured for Patterson get in. Patterson pushed his way into the little ship and sat down in the co-pilot seat. The ceiling high stack of boxes started directly behind the front seats in the cockpit. He looked at the incomprehensible consoles and felt a strange itch at the base of his skull, like a thought that was just out of reach.

"Teal'c delivered the box of spares?"

"Yes, it's already loaded."

"Here are the lists and the labels, sir," Staff Sergeant Siler said. "Ops/tech will handle it."

"Thank you, Sergeant. We are cleared for positioning. I hope you have a good holiday."

The shuttle had been on a sort of low level lighting, but as Lorne made his way through the narrow path forward it hummed to life, popping up HUD screens seemingly of its own accord. It settled on a spatial diagram of the loading bay area, which wasn't all that big. Behind them, the ramp started to close.

"Lifesigns?" Lorne said under his breath. The screen highlighted two dots just outside the loading bay. "Good."

Patterson watched in silence. He'd been told about this, about what the Ancient Gene could do if you had it strong enough. Control things with your mind. He'd thought he'd understood.

He hadn't.

Lorne took the pilot seat and then very carefully started turning the shuttle in the cramped space and inch it through a doorway and a turn with less than a hand of clearance on either side. The Cheyenne base hadn't been designed for housing the Gate, let alone for having this type of shuttle this far underground, and its sharp turns and narrow doorways weren't exactly an easy fit. It took about ten minutes to get the jumper into the Gate room, lined up next to the big ramp.

The Gate began to activate just as they got into position.

 _Sorry Major Lorne, SG-5 is dialling in,_ a voice boomed around the gate room.  The big heavy blast doors of the gate room began to close.

"No problem, we're waiting on your ready," he answered. Then, turning to Patterson, "You ever seen this?"

"They let me watch from the conference room once, sir," he said, eyes glued to the great ring, to the way the chevrons clunked and lit up. A gasp escaped him as the vortex roared into the gate room, passing within metres of the viewscreen of the shuttle.

"I have been going through the gate for seven years now, and that still takes my breath away," Lorne said, looking just as fascinated as Patterson felt.

It did look different from up close. From behind the big window of the conference room it was almost theoretical, and he'd been told and shown so much unbelievable stuff it had just settled in among the shifting mass of suddenly up-ended world views. Aliens were real. They could go to other planets. He'd agreed to being stationed in another galaxy. There was a giant rotary dial that formed wormholes. Sure.

Now, as the surface of the… wormhole, he supposed, settled into something water-like that seemed to glow, it felt real, and he shivered a little when people started to walk out of that surface.

They were in dark green BDUs - different from the dark grey he and Lorne were wearing - and carried P90s. They looked a little scraped up, like there had been some running and crawling through ditches involved, and one of them had a blackening eye and was leaning on somebody with a civilian looking haircut.

The Marines guarding the gate room had their weapons up while the gate was still connected. The moment the gate surfaces 'popped' (Weird. _Weird_ ) there was a _Stand down_ command, the weaponry went down and the blast doors opened to let in a medical team.

A few minutes later the team had been taken away to the infirmary for their med checks (he'd learned that would be a routine part of gate missions) and the PA voice said _Dialling Midway Station_.

Major Lorne carefully moved the shuttle sideways until it was at the base of the ramp, and a moment later Bryan couldn't stop himself from flinching as the vortex thundered toward them and just over the shuttle.

 _Jingle Bells_ echoed around the gateroom as the wormhole surface settled, and Major Lorne grinned as he slowly sent the shuttle up the ramp. There was an oddly musical three-tone sound that he thought might be a claxon, and then he gasped as the front of the shuttle was disappearing into the shining surface, then the consoles, then it was right in front of him, and then--

They were hanging in space.

"Sorry, I could have done that a little faster," Lorne said once he'd given radio confirmation and the wormhole behind them had disappeared. "It can be a little unnerving the first time."

"I guess you have to go through no matter what," Patterson said distractedly, detachedly noticing that yes, they really were in space. Up ahead was a second gate, physically connected to the one they'd just come out of.

Lorne keyed in the symbol sequence that Patterson had been given to memorise, and the gate up ahead connected.

 _Lorne! Was your mission successful?_ the radio hail was greeted in an amused drawl. Lorne grinned.

"Hello Colonel." Patterson did a double take. _That_ was a Colonel? It had to be the least likely sounding voice he'd ever heard. "That is a double yes. Both the meeting and the haul were a success. And I have Captain Patterson with me."

_Ah, I love it when a plan comes together. Just head straight for the jumper bay, ops/tech will meet you there for the cargo._

"Copy that, sir. See you in fifteen."

The jumper sped up a little more this time, and Bryan swallowed convulsively, and--

 

The Gate Room was more like a church than like the concrete bunker the SGC had been. It was light and elegant, and light fell in through round windows that had some kind of stained glass pattern. Bryan felt a wash of that just-out-of-reach sensation again, but stronger. Some thought that wouldn't quite form, and he shivered as it pooled warmly in his gut.

The jumper came to a fast stop that should have jolted them, but somehow didn't (he had to find out about the technology behind that) and then started to rise. There was a brief view of a gallery with control panels, and a grinning man with dark spiky hair. Lorne gave him a relaxed salute in greeting as they rose past.

Then they were in a loading bay area, and there were four people waiting. They looked civilian, even in coveralls, and they had pallets and a loading truck with them.

"Major!" one of the waiting team said happily. She had a mass of curly blonde hair and a face full of freckles. She'd tied the arms of her coverall around her waist, and her bright blue t-shirt said 'Atlantis Olympic Swimming Team' and had a picture of a swimmer being chased by a giant squid.

"Hello Kay. I am happy to report the first part of your conspiracy seems to have worked out okay."

The three other team members immediately started stacking boxes onto the pallets. Bryan felt vaguely awkward standing there waiting for… whatever was supposed to happen now (was he to go and report to Colonel Sheppard?) and started helping them.

"Did Teal'c give the stuff for the spares?"

"There's a two big boxes in the cockpit, with the list and labels."

"Teal'c is the _best_ ," she declared, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "He and Vala did _so_ much work on this."

"Do you need help with unloading? I can send.."

"We're trying to keep the jarheads outta this, you know how they gossip," she said. One of the others, a tall man with an angular face, flashed Patterson a grin and cleared his throat.

The woman caught sight of him with boxes in his hands and blushed. "Um, hi! Marine Captain! Sorry. Jesus, way to step into it. Hi! I'm Kay, welcome to Atlantis," she speed-talked, animated and with expressive hands. "Jarheads is an affectionate term, I swear, and you're awesome for pitching in."

He might have felt irritated - civilians didn't really get to call Marines Jarheads - if she hadn't seemed so genuinely flustered, so he offered his hand. Her grip was callused and warm.

"Captain Bryan Patterson. And they do tend to gossip, don't they?"

She flashed him a bright grin and started moving boxes. 

"Right. I'll introduce you to the Colonel, and then we'll get you quartered," Lorne said, gathering up his messenger bag and the crate of normal mail. "And please don't mention the whole packages thing to anybody just yet, or city life will grind to an abrupt halt. As far as anybody else is concerned, this," he nodded to the crate of mail, "is the only mail we brought."

"Understood, sir."

"Hey, Marine! You gonna be at the Sanity Society tonight?" Kay called after them as they left the jumper bay. "2000 hours in the mess hall. It's gonna be big!"

Nate had mentioned the Sanity Society thing, but he still didn't have a clear image of what it was. Something like a recreation commission, maybe.

"Sure, I guess?" he called back with a shrug.

 

Colonel Sheppard was as advertised, laid back and laconic and very, very Air Force. Patterson found it both more and less worrying than he'd thought he would; the man clearly had a core of steel, and from the stories he could be extremely effective when it was needed. Patterson just didn't like unstable people, especially not when they were his CO - he'd rather take somebody less brilliant (as Sheppard apparently could be) but dependable. You never knew where you stood with a CO who was as likely to go haring off on his own as anything.

Lorne, on the other hand, he was developing an appreciation for, because despite the mild manners he seemed to inspire plenty of respect in the Marines they encountered on their way through the tower.

He would be introduced to the civilian leader later (Dr Woolsey was in a meeting) but Sheppard summoned the training officer, a big black guy with a British flag patch, Captain's bars and a very crisp BBC accent, who introduced himself as Darren Avery.

Together they made their way to quarters - a spacious room with a view fit for a 5-star hotel - and then, because it was just coming on lunchtime by Atlantis Standard Time, to the mess hall.

"Normally this is where I'd hand you over to your team, but since you don't have one, come have lunch with mine. I have Brad Colbert too, I believe you know him."

"Ah yes, we served together during Operation Iraqi Freedom."

"Ah, the period of his life I believe he refers to as 'that clusterfuck in humvees'," Avery said, utterly straight-faced, and Bryan snorted with laughter. That about described it, yes.

The mess hall was mid level in the big tower, still high up enough to have a great view. There was a half round balcony inside, and the space underneath was barred by tall panels. There were plenty of people around, military and civilian (and probably military out of uniform) speaking a variety of languages. There were a few people who didn't seem to come from Earth at all, judging by their attire. He supposed they were aliens. They just looked like people to him.

Avery took him through the lunch line, advising him on which of the weird looking vegetables were good, to avoid the Bolognese as the current KP team apparently wasn't any good at it. There was a sort of lumpy green mash that was supposedly delicious.

Alien food. This was going to take some getting used to.

They sat down at a table near the windows, to be joined shortly by a relaxed looking Brad Colbert. He'd finally been bumped up to Staff Sergeant, and he looked a bit more weathered than he'd had, but also more at ease in himself. Patterson supposed that compared to that mess in Iraq, anybody would look better elsewhere, but there was something about Colbert that looked.. comfortable. Perhaps even happy.

"I see that Fick made good on his promise to recruit you, sir," he said dryly, and the two men shook hands. Colbert went off to get food of his own.

"Hey it's Darren, go ahead," Avery said, pressing finger to the small radio headset he was wearing. "You brought him? Yeah, we're by the window."

A few minutes later they were approached by a woman who seemed to be Sheppard's hair-twin. She had Captain's bars and a medic patch on her BDUs. She pushed a wheelchair with a wan looking man in sweats.

Avery greeted them both warmly, apparently particularly pleased to see the man - who introduced himself as Michel Fournier - out of bed.

"Lee literally had to sign me out like a library book," Fournier, who was apparently Avery's team scientist, chuckled wearily.

"Aww, I just had to promise not to leave you alone, and return you on time!" the woman - Captain Lee Brittner, Avery's second in command - grinned. "Ohh, I see they have the creamy earth roots from Eipe. "I'm getting us food."

Fournier looked vaguely interested, and both his team members seemed pleased.

Patterson ate his weird alien food and observed the team, how fond and comfortable they all seemed together, even Colbert. Apparently they were still recovering from a rescue mission about 6 weeks ago; Colbert and Brittner were on their (hopefully) last week of light duty.

"And they haven't found a new scientist yet," Fournier said blithely, ignoring the frowns. "I keep suggesting people, and they keep finding things wrong with them." He gave Colbert a meaningful look.

"To be fair, we did unanimously decide Hairfield's a wanker," Avery said. "Brad was just the first to say it out loud."

"Shouldn't have set such a high standard," Brittner said to Fournier. She had a soft, low voice that he was having a hard time imagining issuing commands that Colbert would follow.

"Come on, you knew this was coming," Fournier said, while Colbert and Avery discussed Dr Hairfield's negative properties. Brittner nodded with a faint smile, then cut her eyes over to the two other teammates, as if to say that they hadn't.

Patterson hid a smile. It was clear that while Fournier had accepted he wouldn't go back on active offworld duty, the others weren't there yet. If the man was going to recover at all, because he didn't look so good. But presumably if they were going to repatriate him to Earth, they would have done it before now.

"Does each Gate Team have a scientist?" he asked.

"The recon teams do. If we were okay with having a tech we'd have more choice, but there aren't many field-qualified social scientists," Avery said.

"And I take it the specialisation affects the kind of missions you can take?"

"Indeed. Plus, when we do MEDCAP missions it's really helpful to have somebody who is good with alien cultures to help smooth things along."

"Well, I've got one more guy to introduce you to," Fournier said. "Adrian Hodge. He's mostly an Anthro guy, done a lot with human non-Earth cultures, and he's spent about a year on SG-6. He's coming after New Year. You better be nice to him, because otherwise I'm all out of ideas."

"Isn't SG-6 the team that.." Colbert gestured vaguely.

"--no longer exists?" Brittner finished for him. "Yeah. Team got stuck in an Ori uprising a couple months ago. Hodge is the only one who made it off that rock."

It was quiet for a long moment as they all reflected on that. Even Bryan winced inwardly. Losing Marines had been a rough part of the reality of deployments. Losing several at once was devastating. But being the sole survivor of a four-man team like this, a team that travelled to other planets together and relied utterly on each other?

"Well, I hope nobody gave you the impression this was a safe job," Avery said brightly, breaking the mood.

As if the fact that three of the four of them had gotten severely injured on their last mission hadn't reminded him.

"I think the reality of continuous hazard pay drove that home."

That, plus the safety protocols he'd been given to study before he even came here. There were regular foothold drills.

 

Fournier was visibly flagging by the end of lunch, and Brittner took him back to the infirmary after a warm goodbye. Patterson wondered again at what this place had done with Brad 'The Iceman' Colbert to have changed him this much.

He spent the rest of the very long afternoon (the day rhythm of 28-hour days was going to take some getting used to) getting through a succession of orientation subjects. Got a radio set, learned how the transporters worked, walked through a post-mission protocol, got set up with the Atlantis intranet, and generally learned how to find his way around.

When Avery had to go to a meeting, Colbert took him round to the Marine HQ in the city - referred to as 'The Anthill' - and showed him around. It was ostensibly so he could find the various workout spaces, but it also felt comfortable to be in a Marine-only space, a piece of the familiar in a world that was so literally alien to him.

Colbert was more formal to him than he had been with Avery; the year long team bonding clearly having surpassed the social conventions of rank. With Patterson he was politely formal, never forgetting his 'sirs' like he had with Avery, but still not nearly as cold and remote as Patterson had known him in their former life.

 

That evening he went to the Sanity Society thing, because everybody apart from the on-duty Control Room crew seemed to be going. Nate had recommended that he involve himself in the social side of the city as soon as possible, especially because he didn't have a team of his own, so he went.

It was apparently a much bigger gathering than normally, and it took a while for the crowd to simmer down. The meeting was lead by the woman from Ops/Tech - a Santa hat on her wild hair - together with the rest of her team, and three more people. Avery was among them.

First they ceremonially revealed the area under the balcony. The panels turned open, and then slid away completely to stack very neatly against the pillars. The space underneath the balcony had been meticulously turned into a tiny village, with houses built of scrap wood and trees in large wheeled pots and Christmas lights everywhere. In the 'village square' was a huge evergreen tree, at least four metres high. It was in a giant pot on wheels.

"All hail the Botany department for pulling this off!" Kay grinned. "Now we just need to decorate it, and we'd like all of you to help with that."

They were directed to tables with squares of paper, scissors, glue and some other things. The idea being that they should origami or cut something to put up in the tree.

"And to pre-empt the question," she cut a look over to where a group of Marines had made their presence known, "if you're going to make obscene figures, there better be some seriously good origami skills involved."

When the laughter had died down, she held up a hand.

"Last thing. If you could please all go to the table that has the first letter of your last name on it, we will be able to find you and deliver your Christmas package."

There was an immediate, deafening roar of voices expressing surprise and excitement. Patterson had now learned why; in previous years the packages had come by space ship, and Atlantis personnel had been under the impression that would be happening again; only the Hammond's departure had been delayed and the ship was expected to arrive well after Christmas.

He made his way to the table with the letter P, half heartedly looking at the video screens that were showing origami examples and how to make them. He didn't really feel he had any business here, really, but a surprising amount of people got underway with making decorations, so he supposed he might as well.

"Man, the sanity average in Pendleton must be plummeting if they got you as well, sir!" he heard, and turned around to see Ray Person - a sergeant now, imagine that - grin at him.

"Well, it went up quite a bit after you left," he said dryly. Person looked good, a little more filled out and a little less manic. Patterson knew the guy hadn't been himself in Iraq; too many hours without sleep and what he now suspected had been stimulants had turned Person into a parody of himself. Here he seemed like the grown up version of the guy Patterson had met in Pendleton and during training exercises - alternately soft spoken and bouncy.

They caught up while he folded a paper crane, which was the only origami he knew. Apparently Nate's team had just met its new Team Leader, and in Nate's absence they'd been doing some interesting exercises to get to know each other. Patterson wasn't sure if he should feel sorry for Staff Sgt Keawe, who was a three-year Atlantis veteran, or for the team.

Person and a few others were following along with the physicist at the table, who was demonstrating how to make intricate fractal snowflakes.

Captain Rohaan Patel, who he'd met that afternoon, was folding a complicated star.

"I wasn't really expecting people to get into this," Patterson confessed when Person turned his attention to the cutting.

"People get into all sorts of weird stuff out here," Patel chuckled. "Though admittedly for some of my Marines the primary motivation is to meet women."

Patterson frowned, because that didn't seem very professional to him.

"It's a permanent duty station, not a deployment," Patel reminded him. "I know that takes some getting used to. But if they want to go and learn the Lindy Hop, or play alien board games, or learn juggling or origami to meet some new people, I'm all for it. Helps keep you sane out here."

"I suppose the whole 'your new base is a city' thing will take me a while," Patterson nodded.

Patel started to answer, but they got distracted by the crowd parting to reveal the Ops/Tech woman - Kay - approach with a cart full of boxes. Patterson saw that there were a couple of other people walking around and handing out boxes.

Kay set up shop behind a nearby table, drafted Ray Person (who seemed to know her; he would later learn he helped her run Radio Atlantis) to mark people off the list, and started calling out names - starting at O - and handing out packages.

He concentrated on folding a better crane bird, because he'd shipped out early because he didn't have anybody to celebrate with on Earth; he wasn't all that eager to witness everybody else get Christmas packages. But then she got to the P and a few minutes later called out 'Patterson,' and he involuntarily looked up. Were there more people with that name?

" _Captain_ \- _Bryan_ \- Patterson," she said deliberately, looking at him, and really, what the hell? How the fuck could he possibly have a package?

"Come on man, we're waiting here," somebody urged him on, and he went over to accept the box.

"Welcome to Atlantis," Kay said as she handed it over. The warmth in her voice got to him, hit him low and sure with the thought that maybe this wasn't just a temporary reprieve from the seemingly endless heartbreak at home. Maybe this really was going to be his new home.

He backed away a little and found a table with space to put the box down. Inside were candy canes, microwave popcorn, sachets of fancy hot chocolate and toppings, a yoyo, and a bottle of nice shower gel.

Underneath that he found a t-shirt with a screenprint of… he spread it out to get a better look. It was a stick-figure drawing of somebody riding a… somebody riding a goat? Wait, they gave him a t-shirt with a screenprint of a _goat rodeo_? The print was new but the shirt wasn't, though it was still good, and had been washed and neatly folded. He wondered if somebody had left it behind. He'd already learned about the expedition's policy about recycling, and found he didn't mind the idea.  

Underneath that was a laminated print of an amazing photo of the city, taken at sunset; a giant snowflake seemingly made of glass and lace, painted with warm orange light. There was a post-it on it that said 'Thought you might like something for on your walls' with a smiley. There were also two pocket sized set of laminated cards, each held together by a ring. One promised to be 'The Rough Guide To Pegasus' and the other 'The Revised Tourist Guide To Atlantis'.

He looked up and realised that everybody - _everybody_ \- was getting a box. Most of them had stuff in there from home, but not everybody; it stood to reason that among the people who agreed to ship out to another galaxy, were a more than average amount of people with little to no ties to Earth.

That was what the unlabeled packages and the big extra boxes had been about; the ops/tech team and the Sanity Society committee had apparently conspired with people at the SGC so that they could assemble packages for the people who hadn't received one from home. _And_ they'd done it so that you couldn't really tell which ones they were; the boxes all looked the same. There were no pitying looks, no sad people watching from the sidelines.

It was something so unexpectedly, breathtakingly kind that it felt like a gutpunch. He had to work for a few moments to keep his face straight and his breath even.

 

"A yoyo! Awesome! Sir, swap you my Rubik's cube?" Ray Person startled him out of his thoughts. "I managed to fix my old one, now I've got two."

He indulged Person and finished his paper decoration, then tucked his package under his arm as he walked over to put it in the tree. It wasn't a Christmas tree, but the nearest Pegasus equivalent they'd been able to find. The smell was wrong, but he liked the little 'village' anyway, the creative way they'd used materials, how much it felt like a community effort.

The mess hall was still in an uproar of people waiting for packages, opening them, reading letters, swapping contents. The same acoustics that had made it possible for Kay to address the entire crowd without amplification, turned this into a solid wall of sound.

He walked to the door that lead to the balcony. Looked for a button or a swipe sensor, but the door opened seemingly by itself.

 

The balcony was large, but there were only a few people out. Two people in science division jackets having an urgent conversation in a corner. A few more dotted along the railings, packages at their feet. On the far side he spotted Colbert, facing outward next to what turned out, on approach, to be Captain Brittner. They were both in civvies. Even though there was an arms length of railing space between them, there was something that made him hesitate to approach, some shared mood between them.

Brittner had.. not heard him, he'd been quiet. Perhaps sensed him. Avery had mentioned that she would be a suitable person to ask for help with the ATA gene learning process.

"Captain Patterson," she acknowledged.

"Please, say Bryan."

"I'm Lee," she said with a tiny smile. "Brad and I are holding an Introverts Anonymous meeting, if you want to join us."

He shrugged and joined them at the railing, looking out over the city and the sea beyond. Far behind him the sliding doors opened a moment, letting the wall of sound inside escape for a few moments, but then they closed again and the silence outside took back over. The wind made interesting tones around a tower out on one of the piers - he wondered if the tower had been designed for that, it sounded almost musical - and there were distant sounds of waves.

The last rays or deep orange sunlight hit reflective surfaces, were channelled down into the green spaces in the city, before slowly disappearing. The sky was painted from deep dark blue to purples and pinks. The moon was up, larger than you'd see it on Earth, but then he leaned back to stretch his neck and saw a second moon already overhead.

As the sky darkened to blue-black the stars became visible, from a small smattering slowly filling out until they filled the vast expanse of the sky. It was a strange, almost hysterical realisation that the two people standing next to him had _been_ to some of those, that _he_ would be going to some of those.

There was that strange, foreign sensation again, stronger than before, a sensation that reminded him of nestling into a warm bed, of the colour of coffee, of pulling open the oven and getting a blast of hot, apple-pie scented air. He thought maybe that it was Atlantis, that the city was somehow pushing those sense-memories to the front of his mind, and of what that might mean.

 _I'm glad to be here_ , he thought, consciously shaping the words into thought. There was no answer in a way that he could define, but space vampires be damned, he couldn't wait until he'd have the chance to explore this whole new galaxy. He was pretty sure he was going to like his new permanent duty station.

**Author's Note:**

> Review, or the bunny gets it
> 
> (except there is no bunny)


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